Agony and the Internet

One of the biggest things that struck me on rereading The Shallows in preparation for leading a faculty summer reading discussion at the beginning of this school year was the similarities that Carr points out between the digital word and the spoken word.

He talks a lot about the kind of mind that reading fosters: A mind that can be quiet and focus on a single task for an extended period of time.

And he contrasts that with the kind of mind that the Internet fosters: One that harvests large quantities of information quickly without going too deep.

But in these comparisons, he brings up some ways in which the digital word is taking us back to what came before writing. Primarily, this is social information sharing.

In the oral tradition, sharing information is, by necessity, a social event. One person speaks to one or more people, imparting what they know. The person sharing the information is treated as an authority and can be questioned. Information sharing is interactive. In Orality and Literacy, Ong talks about the agonistic nature of oral cultures. People do battle with words. Think of debate. Think of jokes and riddles.

Writing, and reading, Carr points out, are both solitary events. The piece of writing becomes the authority as the original author can not, usually, be questioned. And the writing continues to say the same thing, no matter what you ask it. There isn't the same back and forth, the same argumentation.

And then there is the Internet. Web 2.0, the social web, to be exact. Yes, we have blogs, facebook, and youtube, allowing anyone and everyone to share content with the multitudes. But more importantly, we have comments. Anyone and everyone can argue with the author, not just the work.

Now think about flame wars. Think about how reading the comment section on almost anything on the Internet can make you lose faith in humanity. People say it is just that people feel more free to be mean online because of distance and anonymity. But I think the driving force behind these arguments may run deep. Like, oral roots deep.

This is the agony. It is the way of social information sharing. I suspect it is a little cruder now than in the old days. But if we understand it maybe we can channel that argumentative energy towards something more productive? I would like to think so.